Attracting teachers isn’t about licensing

Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Johnston recognize that Colorado needs to create a better environment to identify the best education candidates and retain them. However, the issue is not about the licensure process that is causing young people to reject a teaching career in this state. It is instead a pervasive attitude that Colorado teachers are a worthless lot who do not deserve the salary they have or a pension plan.

Senate Bill 191, which is on the road to implementation, is a cumbersome and expensive teacher evaluation program that earned its passage by arguing that most state educators are shiftless and lazy teachers who need to be identified, retrained or fired.

When citizens and politicians in this state defend excellent teachers with the zeal they defend their guns, the best and the brightest will eagerly seek a career path as a Colorado educator.

Renee Farrar, Lakewood

This letter was published in the May 28 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow eLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

When citizens and politicians in this state defend excellent teachers
with the zeal they defend their guns, the best and the brightest will
eagerly seek a career path as a Colorado educator.

Highlighted to highlight.

Best,

D

StillUndecided

People that criticize the school system speak out against the teachers UNION and the school ADMINISTRATION. You will almost never hear criticism about the individual teachers. To the contrary, most people have nothing but praise for the individual teachers that teach their kids. People cannot defend excellent teachers with zeal or anything else because the current system forces all to be treated the same. Even worse, the current system protects veteran teachers, regardless of how effective they are, at the expense of incoming teachers. Look up Katie Hoffman on YouTube for an example.

toohip

The unions ARE the teachers. The Administration is not. The system is too top-heavy with administrators, rather than teacher boots on the ground. The administration tries to run an education like a business, which it is not. There are business aspects of a school system, but not how you educate kids and it’s the teachers who are these boots on the ground that you can’t treat like a fast food employee or someone you can easily replace because you don’t like their personality or their outspokenness.

Guest22

Amen TH! I love the last part of your final sentence, “…someone you can easily replace because you don’t like their personality or their outspokenness” as it encapsulates exactly what is wrong with the education bureaucracy.

holyreality

Funny how that quote applies to students even more so.

Critical thinking skills taught in schools today are in spite of not because of administration. A “good” teacher these days is one who teaches the “no child left behind” test, and of course obey, give control to, and fear the authority.

Modern schools dumb us down, we graduate ready to work in someone else’s petty dictatorship, just smart enough to get the job done but too stupid to see we are getting the shaft.
H/T George Carlin.

I submit that so long as this basic fact is not acknowledged in any education debate, it is all noise and a waste of time.

Guest22

Bingo, HR! The education debate is a bunch of inane chatter with lots of pats on the back, but little actual reform because that would threaten the education oligarchy’s authority/power.

HA! Idiocracy! I absolutely love that film, mostly because it seems like that’s the direction we’re headed. Time to water the crops with Gatorade!
…

http://twitter.com/ChrisRInDenver ChrisInDenver

It has electrolytes!

holyreality

I regret saying this but Amurrika has already arrived.

Just about ANY T-bagger rally resembles the characters in Idiocracy. Monsanto already has us watering with Roundup and Agent Orange.

RabidRadical

Thank God for parents! If it weren’t for them, I would never hear an encouraging word from anyone, anywhere.

http://twitter.com/ChrisRInDenver ChrisInDenver

I fall directly in that category. My kid’s teachers are great, and they work hard. It’s the Union and Administration and it’s politics I can’t stand.

TomFromTheNews

Absolutely right on, Ms. Farrar! The annual evaluations of every teacher in SB191 are already in place and a huge drain on the time and energy of administrators. I would point out the excellent last sentence, but Dano already did!

ParentalSights

Perhaps if Colorado actually PAID its teachers a decent salary, they wouldn’t have to continuously resort to recruiting retirees and homemakers to become teachers.

How many people do you think know that the average starting salary for a new teacher in Colorado is about $30,000? That after six years and a Master’s degree the salary is about $43,000? Math/science majors coming out of college start at $50,000+ in other fields. Explain why a math major would choose to be an educator?

toohip

This salary deficiency is timeless. I remember my cousin, who was a teacher and married a teacher in Kansas. In order to make ends meet he had to work as a wheat harvester and she a part time job during the summer to pay the bills. My retired teacher wife used to create an educational “boot camp” to bring in new kids for the summer, and my teacher daughter works as waitress during the summer. My wife had her masters and more than enough post-grad courses to get her PhD when she retired – it’s part of the career development process. . like doctors have to do to stay current. Yet we treat them so disparately, in pay, and respect.

Guest22

You couldn’t pay me enough to re-enter any public school district! It’s not about the money, it’s all about RESPECT, especially from administrators who have little to no teaching experience and think they know everything about education because they have a Master’s or Doctorate in Educational Administration. No degree can substitute for direct teaching experience!

StillUndecided

Does the current system allow us taxpayers of Colorado to identify a single high-performing new teacher and bump their salary from $30K in that first year to $60K or $80K or whatever we would like in the second year? If not, what or who is standing in the way of rewarding that individual high-performing teacher?

RabidRadical

I’m sorry, but even under the new, SB 191 guidelines, good teachers will not be rewarded. The new system merely allows teachers to be summarily fired on the basis of the annual evaluation that may or may not be carried out by a competent administrator. If one is deemed proficient, they may get a raise; however, if that has been determined, it hasn’t been published. So, who or what is standing in the way is a good question; I’ll float my opinion: the state legislature. God forbid we should pay teachers what they’re worth.

guest

No, god forbid we should pay teachers what you think they’re worth.

Now if you ever worked in the private sector you would know if you aren’t deemed proficient you get fired. If you are you will get raises but it won’t be the same as everyone else gets. And if you are a star, you will get very good raises.

Good teachers can’t be rewarded properly because the teacher’s unions are against it.

RabidRadical

I worked at a Fortune 500 company as the Director of Strategic Planning in the ’80’s. I know exactly how those systems work. Now, if you’re going to tell me that a teacher’s salary and bonuses will be based on his or her performance that is an objective measure, then I’m all for it. But, I’m sorry, when half of a teacher’s performance depends on how well his or her students do on a test that holds NO consequences for the student, as the current TCAP and the new PARC do, and the other dependent on the OPINION of an administrator who may have spent 8 or 9 years in the classroom 8 to 10 years ago, then you do NOT have a performance-based salary structure.

In private industry, I had short and long term objectives, the accomplishment of those objectives was based solely on and depended only on how well I did my job as a director, to wit: how well I managed my managers, engineers and forecasters.

It isn’t the unions, it’s the test-writing corporations and their lobbyists and the legislature that is responsible for the debacle we call public education.

Dano2

No Child’s Behind Left!

Best,

D

guest

I’m not sure if that is gibberish on DTJ’s part or idiocy or a little of both.

guest

You said you worked for a Fortune 500 company. Were your reviews and raises all based on objective measures? Or did you boss have a lot of input in your review. So how did they determine how well you managed your managers, engineers and forecasters (engineers in Strategic Planning???).

A big part of my reviews was how well my organization performed. But added on to that was how well my boss thought I was doing.

What I see with teachers is they don’t want to be rated on the test scores of their kids and it appears they don’t want the subjective opinion of their bosses. It seems as if teachers just don’t like to be the ones who are graded.

RabidRadical

My VP had minimal input as we were data driven. I (and those above me) would provide input in special cases. My performance was, ultimately, determined by the performance my people–that is, whether they were making their numbers, i.e., how accurate their predictions were. And yes, engineers in strategic planning–what new technology changes were coming down the pike (at that time, things like T-1 and T-3 pipes, data packets, etc.) and whether those technologies would have an impact on us and when.

Bottom line: my people’s pay was determined by their performance; my pay was determined by how they, as a group, performed.

You are so wrong about teachers not being the ones don’t like to be graded. Every teacher who cares even has students fill out surveys that address how the teacher is doing. Good teachers welcome input. What we object to is having evaluations partially based on how well students do on a test that has NO impact on their lives whatsoever. When an administrator who was an English teacher for 9 years, 11 years ago, is assigned as my evaluator, I have problems with that. That AP is not current on Mathematics pedagogy and has no experience teaching Mathematics. Yet, there they are, evaluating me as if they’re some expert.

Teachers don’t mind being evaluated and being paid for performance as long as the methods of evaluation are reasonable and reflect factors over which we have control. Let me ask you: were any of your evaluations dependent on the performance of another department that was not related to your department?

guest

I agree with you that good teachers welcome input. But your comment “What we object to is having evaluation partially based on how well students do on a test that has NO impact on their lives.” What I’m hearing when I read this is we object to having part of our evaluations based on something we don’t have any control over. But that is a fact of life. You can be a fabulous boss and if the economy in your industry goes into the tank, you will be heavily affected by that.

Were any of my evaluation dependent on the performance of another department that was not related to my department? I’m not sure what your definition of related departments is, but I remember getting into to a few brou ha ha’s with both sales and quality assurance. Sales had forecast that went along nicely and then had insane increases which I had to stock the warehouse in anticipation of the sales increase. If the forecast came true and I didn’t get the inventory in place we would be in trouble, but it the forecast was missed, I could be faced with huge cut backs as we tried to balance that. With QA, I was in a start up operation and they were geared up to basically disqualify about 75% of the product we were making. I remember going into one meeting with product rejected by QA, telling the VPs exactly what it was rejected for and where the defect was and asking them if they could see it. They couldn’t, but I was being judged on production, scrap, etc.

Life isn’t fair, but good teachers like good strategic planners will do well over time.

RabidRadical

I will be blunt: if a student taking the previous years’ CSAPs, this year’s TCAP or next (and subsequent) year’s PARCC exams were to get Unsatisfactory, there would be absolutely no repercussions. That’s why in every classroom where these tests are being administered, there are “bubble races”, Bubble Christmas Trees, one-word obscenities for an essay, etc. it’s quite a treat to proctor an exam where a child finishes bubbling in 40 multiple choice questions in under three minutes and boasts how they beat the previous year’s time. Proctors are only allowed to ask if they have completed all questions. Proctors may say nothing else.

It’s no wonder test scores are low, the test literally has no impact of the students’ lives.

Think of it this way: you’re tasked with digging 200 ft. of ditch, but your employees are hired by someone else, paid by someone else and will get paid no matter what–if they finish, if they don’t finish, if they just stand around, it doesn’t matter, they’ll still get paid. You, on the other hand, only get paid (or get a bonus) if they complete some Pre-determined amount of ditch, say, 150 ft. The catch is, you don’t know the ditch diggers, and you can’t say anything to them or do anything to them for not working or digging wrong. That’s the system for teachers’ evaluations. Make sense?

guest

Somehow using an analogy where you don’t know the ditch diggers doesn’t seem to equate with being a teacher. I would assume you know your students and have varying relationships with them. I also assume that the majority will not do a bubble race (I would expect that to be a small number). Are there some problems? Of course, but there were problems long before we went to this type of testing or there would have been no need for the testing. I hear the left using terms like “mend it don’t end it” when it comes to affirmative action, etc. Perhaps you should get the teachers together to try to mend the current system.

RabidRadical

Actually, for testing purposes, it does. The test writing company, in conjunction with CDE, has requirements (e.g., maximum number if students in a room, etc.). The students are randomly assigned to rooms as are proctors. It is common for a teacher to only know a couple of kids. But that doesn’t really matter as all that one is allowed to say to the students that is not a scripted set of instructions is “Have you answered all questions?” Or “Are you done?”

I would describe the test takers in each room as follows: in a room of 25, 3-4 are actually trying, 2-3 are maliciously taking the exam, another 2-3 are screwing around (not actually trying to mess up the exam results) and the rest start off motivated, but by the 3rd test of the day, their attention and focus is waning and the last day of testing, they’re totally burned out. Bottom line, my experience at teaching all levels (honors to regular) is that only the top students score relative to their ability. I can’t tell you how many B and C students are scoring unsatisfactory on the exams. I can’t honestly think of a B or C student whose test score reflects their abilities.

You can’t apply business practice to Education because the circumstances are not analogous unless you make up extreme examples.

guest

The numbers are out there put out there by Teachers portal. The starting salary is $32,000 and the average salary is $49,000. Colorado ranks almost exactly in the middle of all states at 25/26. An interesting stat they put out (I’d like to know more about it) is that teachers pay only consumes 29% of what Colorado puts into education.

RabidRadical

Forty years ago, a suburban high school of 3,000 students was staffed by the principal, an assistant principal and 2 deans. Today, a suburban high school of 2,500 students has a principal, 3 assistant principals (one AP’s duties are primarily centered on test administration), and 4 deans. Forty years ago, there were about 5 counselors; today, there are 8. Where is the money going? I’d hate to look at how bloated District administration is given the bloat in school administration.

toohip

The war on teachers is alive and running hard in this nation, and Colorado is no different. My wife is a retired DPS teachers and I’ve heard all the stories including about licensing. My daughter, a teacher legacy is in her 5th year, and is already so frustrated with this anti-teacher sentiment and in-fighting politics in the schools she’s ready to change careers. We need to get the best and brightest teachers, but you’re never going to get them at the salaries they’re start at. A math teacher with a Master’s degree can get twice the salary as a programmer or science job in the oil industry or other private industry. We need to PAY teachers more to get the best and brightest, not constantly blame them for kids not learning, and holding them to hire standards that we don’t hold for our own jobs.

Matt McQuinas responded to this original proposal with what is a great idea. .

Want to do something truly revolutionary? Turn teaching into a profession along the lines of medicine and the law; in other words, get the State out of the education certification business. Create professional education associations that enforce professional standards, ethics and oversight.
With the State as the gate-keeper, teachers keep getting punked. Do the AMA and ABA get punked? I don’t think so. And we have high quality and highly paid doctors and lawyers.

Think about it.

Dano2

My sister, a teacher for 29 years, just got her walking papers this year after many years of increasing frustration and BS. We all tried to tell her daughter to go into something other that teaching, but she did anyway and she will be at her 3rd school in 5 years, 20 more minutes each way by car (no transit in Detroit area).

An educated populace is an aware populace. The vested interests in this country can’t redistribute wealth upward if everyone is aware it is happening. Distractions on your phone and ignorance are the tools the vested interests need.

Best,

D

RabidRadical

And a key culprit(vested interest) are the test-writing corporations who lobbied mightily for NCLB.

http://twitter.com/ChrisRInDenver ChrisInDenver

I rarely agree with you, but do on this one. Douglas County has something like 7 “Assistant Superintendents” who each make about $180K a year. They teach our kids zip. Thin out the overpaid administration and pay the teachers.

But at the same time you need reform to the tenure situation. Old, burned out teachers keep their jobs while the energetic young ones are more likely to be let go in the event of a downsizing. That’s not right either.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

Recent Comments

peterpi: I think I have this correct: Voters in Jefferson County elected school board members that the superintendent...

peterpi: Sounds good to me. For future employees. I believe police and fire dept. brass have also been known to get...